The Wild, Beautiful Thing, The Burning Heart
by GeorgeHale
Summary: 'You slip your coat around my shoulders, thinking I am cold, but my heart is burning, Mulder, always burning in your presence.' This is the story of how Squirrel fell for Moose. I love reviews!


**A/N: **This tiny bit of fluff is how I feel Scully fell in love with Mulder. This is meant as a companion piece to Mulder's P.O.V. in _Love in the Rain_, and both are meant as stand-alone prequels to my novella _Redemption_. For Scully, this is post I.W.T.B.

**Classification: **Maple Syrup M.S.R., very canon with the exception of assumed events after _The Truth_  
**Spoilers: **_Piper Maru_, _Theef_, _The Unnatural_, _Existence_, _Cancer-Arc_, _All Things_, _Pilot_, _Requiem_, _Trust-No-1_, _Teliko_, _How the Ghost Stole Christmas_  
**Disclaimer:** Pswhah, as if. I wish _I made this_. Then I could be rich and gain Zen. Credit to you C.C., 1013, and Fox.  
**Rating:** G

Every now and then I catch a glimpse of her – the girl who rode the pumper truck with Marcus, that carefree wild thing that stole her mother's cigarettes to blow smoke rings on the porch. I kept a tighter rein over her once I joined the F.B.I., but now and then I'd lose control over her and find myself considering you _that_ way. You didn't know this about me until much later, but I have this thing for older male authority figures and broken men, the kind with vision and drive like yours. And even for as much as I've loved them all, there's something that's always been uniquely special about you that sets you apart, Mulder. It's your passion for justice, your need to unleash the truth, that relentlessness that overcomes any obstacle that dares to stand in your way.

"_And because they know that they could drop you in the middle of the desert and tell you the truth is out there and you'd ask them for a shovel."_

That devil-may-care side of me has always secretly admired your defiance of the powers that be, your irreverence for the status quo. I've always prized your intellect, that element of genius that paved your path to the X-Files. I've always been drawn to it the way I'm drawn into your dark haunted eyes. She had to know what you'd think of next, even as I contemplated requesting a transfer.

"_You see that, Scully, you always keep me guessing."_

You threw me off-balance, Mulder, challenged my conceptions, changed the foundation of every belief I have. You taught me to think outside-the-box, why slapping a piece of horsehide with a bat is a worthwhile hobby, why miracles really do exist. It's you who kept me guessing and I thrived on it.

Until the experience with my cancer, I never realized how deep I had left you in. I had followed your quest for the truth as far as my own grave, it seemed, and my primary regret became not making the journey in the first place, but leaving you to follow the rest of the path alone. I knew I was dying and so I left you show me the romantic gestures I'd been longing for, the secret side of you I had never known in a small glimpse of what I could not have until we travelled much further ahead. Once I recovered, thanks to your heroics, it was against the rules. I worried you had conveyed them in some sense of guilt over what I had sought from Jerse. The wild thing lay broken in her shell, devoid of weight and curves in a cloak of broken self-confidence.

The tenderness was a tease, Mulder, and I longed for you after that, but you were my partner, my colleague, my best friends, and the man I had come to trust like no other. I kept her in check through the fear that our friendship might be irretrievably broken, the knowledge that our bonds could be used to push us apart. A vision later helped me overcome that fear, made me realize that life is too short to play by the rules, to be ruled by fear. You helped me realize that as well. I guised myself into loving you as an act of biology, but you showed me truth we both came to know. I finally acknowledged what was in my heart and acted on it before it was too late. I've never regretted that decision and have only wished that I would have made it sooner. After the cancer, perhaps, certainly after Antarctica.

How ironic that we began and ended our work together on the X-Files in the same, small Oregon backwater. You made one preposterous statement after another, took me tearing through the forest at night, argued with me through a downpour. Played the gentleman when I came to you petrified with mosquito bites, the wild thing in her bathrobe. On our last trip there, you held me when I collapsed in the forest, embraced me as I mourned the fate of my barren body. Told me there was more than this. Left me with the greatest of gifts even as I lost you for what seemed like forever.

Done with the X-Files, running across several continents, fleeing the life we once led lest we both find our demise, I left the wild thing loose, and the one who loved you from day one. Inveigled, obfuscated, and deceived no more.

My protector and endangeror… our love is eternal, the kind in Shakespearean sonnets that makes others jealous on Valentine's Day, the deep down forest-fire variety that's always burning. The underground coal mine lit ablaze metaphor, left to engulf the world until it burns itself out. We're like that and I wouldn't have it any other way - beyond Romeo & Juliet, even better than Bonnie & Clyde or Lyda & Maurice. Our mutual crucifixion and that intense chemistry we've always shared have drawn us closer than ever before.

Our lives have changed now, Mulder, but for the better.

I present you with your coffee with a good morning mucky-mouth kiss. It's a warm morning ritual we share on our back porch as I slowly slide my hand up your back beneath your shirt. So long I denied myself this, relegated to brushing my fingers through your hair, along your arm in a passing glance, clasping your hand in a moment of desperation or hugging you. The answer should have been obvious but it was hidden by years. We admire the sunrise in silence and somewhere a silent Buddha smiles. You slip your coat around my shoulders, thinking I am cold, but my heart is burning, Mulder, always burning in your presence.


End file.
